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http://www.serverwatch.com/hreviews/article.php/3738611

The 8-socket server space has certainly never been the hottest sector in town. In fact, many of the top vendors don’t even have a single 8-socket machine in their product portfolio.

“Last year, IDC estimated the 8-plus socket segment to account for about 5 percent of the x86 server revenue,” said Jed Scaramella, an analyst at IDC (Framingham, Mass.). “However, this area of the server marketplace lacks participation from many of the Tier 1 vendors.”

According to IDC, IBM (Armonk, N.Y.), holds a majority market share in the 8-socket space, with around 42 percent of the total. Some server giants, such as Dell (Round Rock, Texas), don’t even attempt to serve this area.

By some indications, however, the lack of emphasis on 8-socket boxes may be changing. HP (Palo Alto, Calif.) has just entered this space with the AMD Opteron based ProLiant DL785 G5. (The G5 just stands for Generation Five.) According to Scaramella, rising customer demand for x86 machines with higher processing capability prompted this move.

“HP and IBM have slightly different hardware approaches to this space,” he said. “IBM’s x Series 3950 is actually a 4-socket building block that can scale up to a 32-socket configuration, though the average-sized configurations are usually 12 sockets. HP, on the other hand, is delivering a straight 8-socket machine.”

Very cool, the DL785 G5 does look cool, the 8 socket servers (which are available from other vendors) could be great for hpc/grid, database or virtualization solutions, they might not be for everyone, but the ability to choose the right system for you, the right number of sockets has to be welcome news to the end user. Check out the article.

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